'The Forbidden Zone' review or 'Did I just see sparks fly?'

I went to see ‘The
Forbidden Zone’ on Friday night and a part of me is still sat inside the
Barbican theatre, my body frozen and my jaw dropped. Holy. Moly.

This
collaboration between Katie Mitchell, the Schaubühne Berlin ensemble and Duncan
Macmillan is just over an hour long but is so exquisitely packed that you'll feel
whole worlds have been revealed to you; theses of complex thought unraveled,
feminist waves unleashed, hearts opened and eye balls dazzled.

The show dances
across two time zones and two continents, both in the grip of war. On one side
of the stage is 1940s America on the verge of the Cold War. On the other side
of the stage we have Germany, already in the throes of World War One. Both
sides are connected by real-life German scientist Fritz Haber, whose research
led to the weaponisation of chlorine gas and the beginning of chemical warfare.

Mitchell and
Macmillan follow two women who have both personal and professional connections
with Haber and his work. On one side we watch Haber's wife, Clara Immerwahr,
who became profoundly disturbed by her husband's deadly research. On the other
side we are shown Clara's granddaughter Claire who, decades later, would
attempt to find an antidote to Haber's lethal gas. The sides dance with each
other - melt and fuse and bleed into each other – across Lizzie Clachlan's
extraordinary set. Film is dominant in this production: a giant screen hangs
about the stage and every scene is filmed live and projected above the glowing,
fractured dollhouse set. All those recorded images might have had a distancing
effect but in fact only make ‘The Forbidden Zone’ feel closer, deeper and
painfully intimate.

The set is a
maze of tiny cut out rooms, which have been sliced up and left open at the
front. All these cramped little spaces look rather pathetic to the naked eye
but, when filtered through a grainy lens and projected above the stage - and
augmented with brilliantly textured soundscapes and lighting - suddenly burst
with life and depth and history. An obsession with scale is written into the DNA
of Mitchell’s production and Macmillan’s writing: both writer and director use small
details, minutely observed moments and neglected characters to explore moments
of huge historical import, whose impact will continue to create ripples - sometimes
quite literally across the screen – over decades to come.

It’s so
interesting to see the minute and obscure details on set – the snaking foliage
that climbs up a garden wall, the dirt that clogs a window, the flickering
reflection in a pool of water or a tiny sign marked DANGER at the back of a
chemical cupboard – take on such powerful significance when examined through a
camera lens and projected on screen. Tiny slithers of scenes, stolen gasps and
snatched little moments explode into life and – radiant and magnified - pulse,
chirp, gleam and drip with meaning. It is quite moving, humbling even, to watch
such a dramatic transformation take place. This magnifying effect also
brilliantly suggests the exponential impact of science and the way in which
small details - minutes, hours and days of careful and focused research – can have
such massive consequences, both beautiful and ghastly.

A life-size
train carriage – yep, a huge dark clunky and rectangular train carriage –
dominates the front of the stage. Young scientist Claire, who says so little
throughout the play but is clearly struggling to process so much (particularly
the gruesome impact of her grandfather's work), spends a lot of time on this
train, sitting and staring and thinking (her
huge and unblinking eyes contain the whole world of the play and beyond).
As soon as Claire steps inside the train, the carriage interior is projected
onto the screen and the transformation of that box – from something distant and
clunky and vague to something close and textured and real – takes the breath away.

When the train
begins to move, the lights of the tunnel flash through the carriage and out
into the audience. Viewed in ‘real-life’ (rather than via the detailed
projection above), all those sparks in the darkness make the carriage look a
little like a lab, where late late-night work is being carried out. It is one
hell of a double/triple image, which allows the show to fold infinitely in on
itself. Look at how our eyes deceive us, says this moment. Look at how complicated
(how beautiful and ugly) life really is, when examined up close. And look at how different the progress of that
train – and all the progress that this sparking train represents – might look
when viewed through a lens and from above.

There are
endless moments like this that hum with a million brilliantly embedded ideas. ‘Forbidden
Zone’ has been so meticulously researched and so beautifully constructed – both
dramaturgically and visually – that ideas and emotions tumble out of every tiny
exposed crack, probing and delighting us.

The two
principle actresses – Jenny König as young scientist Claire and Ruth Marie Kröger
as Haber's wife Clara – say very little but their eyes lie at the heart of this
production. Over and again, we watch their eyes in close up and feel deep
sadness and anger radiate from them. All that heat and fury generated by the
men in the labs and out on the battlefield has seeped inside these two women
and now escapes through their eyes. That same desperate heat – the heat and
passion and rage and sorrow that is given no outlet – also boils beneath the
feminist texts that Macmillan has woven into this piece. Virginia Woolf speaks
of patriotism and the word bursts with an awful and ugly energy. Mary Borden's
journal entries, from her time spent as a nurse in a field hospital, crackle
with rage, frustration and fear: 'Look at this man! Look at death!”, screams
the voiceover, as we watch poisonous foam spew from a dying soldier's mouth.

Clara and Claire
are at the heart of this story yet always on the edges of Mitchell's production.
Many of Claire's scenes in the lab take place behind the train carriage; her
work is not for us to see. In one incredible scene, Claire sits in the train carriage
as an American solider hovers threateningly from afar. Claire attempts to walk
to the end of the carriage – although we, from a superior perspective, can see that
this is not possible since the carriage drops off at the end. The solider moves
forward and attacks Claire and the camera crew – all male? - continue to film.
From our perspective, out in the ‘real world’, the camera men filming inside
the carriage look like normal men, sitting in the train. We watch them sit,
observe and do nothing. In a final image, the train – which has taken Claire to
the end of her journey – smashes up against another carriage. Look at where
this train has taken Claire. Look at where this progress has ended.